Payment Processing · Buyer guide
Bulgaria adopted the euro on 1 January 2026 and became the 21st member of the euro area, at a fixed rate of 1.95583 lev to the euro. For a business that takes cards, the changeover replaced the currency rather than the rules. The EU caps on interchange, the fee your provider passes to the cardholder's bank, still apply: 0.2% of a consumer debit card payment and 0.3% of a consumer credit card payment. Bulgaria's own payments law also bans adding a fee for paying by card.
Here is what the published rates show, read from the providers' Bulgarian pages and the banks' current tariffs on 2 November 2026. Card fees are quoted per payment; monthly plans and rents are flagged where the provider says they exclude VAT, which is 20% in Bulgaria.
The Law on the Introduction of the Euro set the transition timetable. Shops had to show consumer prices in both euro and lev from 8 August 2025 to 8 August 2026, a period that has now ended. Lev notes and coins stayed legal tender for one month after 1 January, and during that month a shop paid in cash had to give change in euro where it could. Since 1 January, every business that must issue a fiscal receipt has had to record and report sales in euro and cents.
The same law made banks and payment firms supervised by the Bulgarian National Bank show their fee tariffs in both currencies during the dual-display period. That is why some price lists still carry lev figures. myPOS still illustrates its rate with a 100-lev payment, Revolut lists its Basic plan as €10 or 20 lev a month, and Stripe's Bulgarian pricing page still says its prices are available in BGN and EUR "while Bulgaria transitions to the Euro". Check that any contract you sign is in euro.
Behind the scenes, the payments law now requires euro card payments to be cleared and settled through a system licensed by the central bank when the card's issuer is licensed or has a branch in Bulgaria and the point of sale is in Bulgaria. BORICA, the national card and payment infrastructure operator, says more than 804,000 POS payments with an average of about €24.90 went through its systems on 1 and 2 January 2026.
The banks publish less. DSK Bank's business tariff, in force from 12 October 2026, says its card-acceptance commission is negotiated, at no less than €0.01 a payment, and charges €10 a month for each physical terminal that takes under €1,000 a month in card payments. UniCredit Bulbank's tariff for companies, in force from 1 January 2026, charges €7.67 a month plus VAT for a terminal the business does not own that takes up to €750 a month, and 2.50% on UnionPay cards; its card-acceptance rates sit in an annex we could not find. Fibank's tariff, in force from 1 November 2026, says merchant commissions on card payments are set by agreement and installing a terminal is free. None of the three publishes a standard rate you could compare.
Take a shop with 160 card payments a month of €25 each, close to BORICA's average: €4,000 of takings, all on EEA consumer cards. On the published rates:
At this size Revolut's terminal comes out roughly €13 to €22 a month cheaper than the flat-rate alternatives, and SumUp's plan barely beats its own pay-as-you-go price. The picture changes with the card mix. A shop serving tourists or businesses takes many cards outside the EU caps, and those cost 2.6% + €0.02 at Revolut, 1.49% at SumUp and interchange and scheme fees plus 1.10% at Viva.com.
On a €40 order paid with an EEA consumer card that works out at €0.58 with Paysera, €0.60 with Revolut, €0.85 with Stripe, €1.00 with SumUp and about €1.04 with Viva.com once one 3-D Secure check is counted. Paysera's low price comes with the longest hold on your money.
Bulgaria's payments now run on euro-area rails. The ECB says Bulgaria completed its onboarding to all TARGET services on 1 January 2026, and BORICA says its own system was connected to SEPA and to TIPS, the Eurosystem's instant-payment service, before the changeover. BORICA's figures for 1 and 2 January include 1,481 person-to-person payments through blink, the local instant-payment service.
The EU Instant Payments Regulation gives payment providers in a country that joins the euro one year from the date of joining to comply with its instant-transfer rules, but never earlier than the deadline for the same kind of provider already in the euro area. That means 1 January 2027 for Bulgaria's banks; e-money and payment institutions, whose euro-area deadline is 9 April 2027, have until then. From 1 January 2027, banks must send and receive instant euro transfers, charge no more for them than for an ordinary transfer, and check free of charge that the payee's name matches the account. DSK already prices them the same: €1 for a standard or instant euro transfer sent online to another bank, and nothing for euro transfers received from banks in the EEA.
For an online shop, Paysera's bank-payment checkout on its Bulgarian price list costs 0.90% with a €0.10 minimum and a €0.40 maximum, falling with volume. On a €40 order that is €0.36, against €0.58 for a card on Paysera's own list. In a shop, Paysera's QR-code payments cost 0.70% with a €3 cap at the lowest tier, down to 0.20% for the largest merchants. Revolut charges 0.5% + €0.02 for Revolut Pay from a personal Revolut user in person, but 2.6% + €0.02 when the payer uses a business account.
Article 68(4) of Bulgaria's Law on Payment Services and Payment Systems says a payee may not charge the payer fees for using card-based payment instruments, or for SEPA euro credit transfers and direct debits. The wording is not limited to the consumer cards whose interchange is capped. Building payment costs into your prices is allowed, and article 51 of the same law says that if you offer a discount for one way of paying, you must tell the customer before the payment.
We found no general duty in Bulgarian law for shops to accept cards. The one we found applies to restaurants: since 1 March 2024, article 117 of the Tourism Act has required restaurant businesses in establishments rated two to five stars to offer payment through a card terminal and to display a notice saying so. In the other direction, the Law on Limiting Cash Payments bans cash for payments of 10,000 lev or more, and its threshold is still written in lev. At the fixed rate that is €5,112.92, so a larger sale must be paid by transfer or by paying into a payment account.
